Category News

What a Musical Life Leaves Behind

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story What do we lose when we lose a pianist? The question is on my mind today, the anniversary of the death of the German pianist and conductor Lars Vogt, who succumbed…

A Sunset Toast to Jimmy Buffett

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story When I heard on Saturday that Jimmy Buffett had died, I wrote a condolence e-mail to his longtime friend Thomas McGuane, the novelist. McGuane, who is married to Buffett’s sister Laurie,…

The Power of Food for People with Dementia

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story After dementia came for my father—after he could no longer read, after he had lost his table manners, after he had started to run his fingers through his hair, as though…

Goings On

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Alex BaraschCulture editor You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. It seems…

Tessa Hadley’s Longing to Put Life Into Words

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Tessa Hadley recently published her thirtieth short story in The New Yorker—the first, “Lost and Found,” came out in 2002—and also, earlier in the summer, put out her twelfth book of…

Deciphering the Wagner Group’s Love for Wagner

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Contemporary discourse has little patience with maddening contradictions of the kind that Wagner embodies.Photograph from brandstaetter images / Getty “Wagner calls off threat to march on Russia capital” was the disorienting…

Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of…

The Political, Metaphysical Melodrama of “Dragonwyck”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood novel, “The Last Tycoon,” is an admiring roman à clef about the visionary studio boss Irving Thalberg, who, in his early twenties, had more or less invented…

Scenes from Hollywood’s Hot Labor Summer

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “Jump the fuck up!” Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, instructed the crowd outside the gates of Paramount. Morello, who wore his signature red bandana around his neck,…